Now do not scold me, my dearest, for I know you will think me a fool. Help me, in the name of that friendship and love between us since our cradles rocked side by side in the same rhythm! I must know her! I must find her! I must have her! You are too wise to believe that a man of noble birth can only be content with women of his own class. He needs from time to time the stronger, more common appetite which drives him to a sturdy blonde like the vulgar shopgirl, Maggie, or else to a plump maiden like Miss Nicoll with her halo of curls. My case is much the worse, for my desire leaves no choice.

It must be Julie. I write because you know the girls of this resort so well and have made them objects of your affectionate and amorous study! If anyone can tell me who she be and where she comes from, it must be you. As the grand, swinging chords of the final variation concluded the recital and the applause burst upon one's eardrums, I knew that I must write to you this very minute. I send the letter express. I would bring it myself, did I not fear to lose all sight of my slim, sullen Julie! Your loving cousin, Augustus Anonymous Augustus and Lady Maude II. Lady Maude to Augustus Lago di Garda, 5 June My own Augustus, What a goose you are! A goose, of course, to lose your heart to such a little minx as Julie and a greater one not to know the prize specimen upon whom you have picked. One really does not know whether to laugh you out of your romantic stupidity or to grieve that you have grown to such age and not learnt to control your temper more firmly.

Though I am but a month your elder, I feel as if the wisdom of centuries belonged to me when I hear you talk as you do. The blonde with the prim little bun and the sulky little face-a hard and mean little face, I have always thought it-who is she? When you told me she was called Julie and that her services were required merely to companion an old and infirm woman-who is the dowager Lady Stacker, by the way-I knew at once.